Peru's police chief has dismissed the head of his criminal investigations unit amid suggestions that officers may have invented a story about a murderous gang of human fat thieves, perhaps to distract from allegations of police killings.
Police recently announced they had arrested three members of a murder ring who confessed to killing five people, extracting their fat and selling it to cosmetics companies in Europe.
Medical experts questioned whether such a black market could exist, saying fat taken from the body of another person has no cosmetic or medical value. [but it has value to people who practice satanic rituals -ed.]
The allegations were pushed by investigations chief General Felix Murga and Colonel Jorge Mejia, head of the anti-kidnapping unit, who branded the ring the "Pishtacos" after a mythical pre-Colombian figure that killed people for their fat.
General Miguel Hidalgo held a news conference on Tuesday to announce Murga's dismissal and said police are conducting an internal probe.
Calls to Mejia's cell phone rang unanswered and police declined to put reporters in contact with Murga.
The macabre tale of the fat gang set off a media storm in Peru. The killers were said to have cut off their victims' heads and limbs, removed the organs and suspended the torsos from hooks above candles that warmed the flesh as fat dripped into tubs below.
Murga and Mejia said fat thieves were believed to be responsible for 30 to 60 disappearances this year in central Huanuco province.
But the La Republica newspaper soon reported that police in Huanuco discounted the fat-stealing theory, saying the allegations made in the capital took them by surprise.
The fact that authorities charged the suspects with drug trafficking in addition to murder, conspiracy and weapons counts, also raised eyebrows.
Former Deputy Interior Minister Carlos Basombrio suggested some police cooked up the story to divert attention from a recently published magazine article alleging police had killed 46 suspects in 2007 and 2008 in the coastal town of Trujillo.
"My hypothesis is that they were mainly trying to cover up the tremendous revelation of extrajudicial killings of criminals in Trujillo made by Ricardo Uceda ... in Poder magazine," Basombrio wrote on the political analysis blog Espacio Compartido.
At the time of the announcement, police showed off two litre-size soda bottles filled with a viscous, yellow fluid they said was seized fat that the suspects claimed was worth $US15,000 ($A16,220) a litre.
Authorities also displayed a video of a suspect confessing to killing and quartering victims for fat, along with photos of a decaying head and bones found in the jungle.
Police said the fat was apparently sold to intermediaries in Lima - allegedly two Italian nationals - then shipped to cosmetic companies in Europe.
They could not confirm any sales, however, and could only identify one victim by name.
Medical experts were sceptical, saying human fat is used in anti-wrinkle treatments but is always extracted from the patient being treated. Injecting fat from another person could produce a life-threatening reaction, they said.
source: sydney morning herald
background reading here.
2. examples of human fat in rituals
ritual implements in Tibetan Buddhism: a symbolic appraisal
excerpt:
In the iconography of wrathful protective deities the skull cup, held at the level of the heart, may also be paired with the curved knife or chopper which may be held above the skull cup. Here the chopper is the weapon that severs the life veins and vital organs of demonic enemies, and the cup is the oblation vessel in which the blood and organs are collected as the deity's sustenance. Descriptions of the contents of a wrathful deity's kapala include warm human blood, blood and brains, blood and intestines, human flesh and fat, the heart or the heart and lungs of an enemy, the heart of Mara and the blood of Rudra.
...
Broadly speaking, the category of ritual objects in Tibetan religion includes nearly all objects that serve a religious function. The extensive variety and uses of ritual objects should be noted as one of the defining elements of Tibetan art, for no other culture has generated so wide a range of such implements. The great breadth also holds true for the materials they are made from. These include various metal alloys, precious metals, especially silver, jewels, wood, sculpted butter, and even human bones and ashes, taking the ritual well beyond the usual range of materials familiar among most religious traditions.
Most ritual objects are used in temples by initiated lamas who alone have the right and duty to perform the various rituals. In this and in many other ways the customs are not different from those of Judaism and Christianity, in which the rabbi or priest performs most acts of worship.
Halloween - a harmless ritual?
excerpt:
Halloween traditions were taken by the Scots and Irish to America, where pumpkins replaced the turnip for the carved Jack-O-Lantern.
...The Druids went from castle to castle doing exactly the same thing. They also demanded a ‘treat’, however, this demand was for a young woman who could be offered as a human sacrifice in a Satanic ritual. The Druids were known as men of Oak and they demanded blood sacrifices. These men were so controlled by Satanic forces that they had strange and frightening powers.
If the ‘treat’ (the young woman) pleased the Druids, they would light a candle made of human fat and insert it in a Jack-O-Lantern to protect those inside the castle from being killed by demons.
When some of the families could not meet the demands of the Druids then it was time for a ‘trick’. A hexagram was drawn on the front door of the dwelling, and it was said that Satan or his demons would kill someone in the household through fear that night.
The spellbinding beat of the druid music would fill the night as the ceremony began. The men would assault their victim and then brutally sacrifice her to their gods.
source
3. There's Something About Henry, by Dave McGowan
excerpt:
After his final arrest, Henry was taken on tour, so to speak, by various law enforcement officials around the country, during which time he confessed to some 600 murders in 26 states. There were various charges made at the time that Henry was being used by his escorts to clear troublesome unsolved murders in places he had never even been.
This quite likely was the case. Henry seemed to have a very chummy relationship with his captors, particularly the Texas Rangers, and provided a valuable service for them by taking the rap for an amazing array of murders. This alone, however, does not explain the personal attention given to Henry's case by Governor Bush.
For that, we need to look at some of the more infrequently noted details of Henry's life history, many of them provided by Lucas himself. Henry, as it turns out, has some interesting stories to tell. In 1985, just a couple years into his incarceration, he attempted to tell his story in a book, written for him by a sympathetic author. The book, titled The Hand of Death: The Henry Lee Lucas Story, tells of Henry's indoctrination into a nationwide Satanic cult. Lucas claimed that he was trained by the cult in a mobile paramilitary camp in the Florida Everglades in the fine art of killing, up close and personal. Other training involved abduction and arson techniques.
He further claimed that leaders of the camp were so impressed with Henry's handling of a knife that he was allowed to serve as an instructor. Following his training, Henry claimed to have served the cult in various ways, including as a contract killer and as an abductor of children, who were then taken just over the border to a ranch in Mexico near Juarez. Henry has said that this cult operated out of Texas and from a ranch in northern Mexico, trafficking in children and drugs, among other nefarious pursuits. In essence, Henry claimed that what appeared to be the random work of a serial killer was in fact a planned series of crimes often committed for specific purposes.
Some of the murders were political hits, according to Henry, including the occasional assassination of foreign dignitaries. This was not true for all of Henry's crimes. Some he did just because that's what he liked to do. And it was the one thing that he was really good at.
read it here
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